Moments with the Morings: 2016

Landon,

You are now four years old! I'm not sure where the time went but suddenly you are now four and seemingly overnight you started talking with a bigger vocabulary (words like enormous and magnificent), expressing yourself well, and generally acting like an all around bigger kid. At the moment you are hopping around the couch with your brother on hippity-hops pretending that you and Ethan are riding dragons. Your dragon breathes ice blocks and Ethan's sneezes snowflakes. You seem to be using your abilities to battle each other. Earlier you were trying to build a giant lego rocket that could fit you inside it and take you to the moon. (you didn't finish). And earlier than that, you were trying to pull a bottle of liquid smoke out of the refrigerator because you thought if you drank it, you would breathe fire. Yesterday you uninstalled your carseat twice while I was driving to, and then later from, a playdate. Last week you took apart a small speaker. We couldn't fix it- you had disconnected all the wires. In a lot of ways you seem much calmer at age 4 but you are also more curious and in some ways just as busy as you were at age 2. You are very imaginative and are always thinking about something!

Two weeks ago you drew a map and then stood up and tried to just walk out the front door without saying a word to any of us. I caught up with you outside the front door with the front door still open. You were standing and talking and gesturing to the general air around you about how you were going to go find the "Mountain of the Whispering Winds." When I called you back inside you seemed genuinely surprised that we weren't automatically following you on your adventure.

One of your recurring pretend play themes is when you pretend to be a blue flying cat. You'll go put on a blue dress up cape and run around the couch.

You love to play with your playsets either upside-down or sideways and they are usually something "new" or loosely related to the theme of the toy. (spaceship is a robot dog and the space base is a robot sheep) You also like to stack your playsets vertically to make giant worlds. Your shopping cart/oven toy is a house when its on its side and when you cook you go and build an oven out of magnetic tiles. You generally don't use toys the way they were meant but you play with all your toys all the time. We've joked about how you seem to have an internal calendar for cycling through all your toys.

You also like to play "combination" style with your toys. I don't have a good name for it really but you remind me of the boy from toy story. You'll build with multiple types of building toys and instead of using action figures you'll make stick people out of tinker toys. Or you'll combine legos and action figures or socks, or really anything that your imagination thinks goes. You incorporate glowing toys, flashlights and anything that lights up in your pretend play scenes and you'll use the entire playroom floor with a city that you've created from multiple playsets, building toys, etc. One day when I was trying to enforce the "one toy at a time" rule (When you are done, put away before getting out a new set of toys) you really let me have it. You found your words to pour out your creative intent to me and your hurt that I would destroy your creation while you were still using it. It didn't matter that it had been two days. What I saw as mess was a world that you had built. While you largely play inside your head, you've been verbalizing your play more and more lately and its a treat to listen in and share in your stories.

You still have your two imaginary friends, Weil-wee and Fly. Sometimes you have other imaginary friends join them but those friends aren't recurring characters for more than a day or two. Weil-wee and Fly are often played as your two hands. One day you were angry with me and wouldn't cooperate with washing your hands because the "lava soap" (foaming soap) would "kill Weil-wee and Fly!"

You've told me that when you are dreaming, you are in Weil-wee Land.

You still love playing in the water, sand, and mud. You also love playing kitchen in your little play house. You like to make Leaf Waffles and Mud Cookies and Sand Coffee.

Your bone obsession started a couple months ago with the cats. You'd annoy them by looking in their ears and trying to point out their bones and inspect their legs.

You are also very interested in the human body. Not what you can see, but what's inside. It started with the bones but now you've been asking about your muscles and how your intestines and organs work. You climbed your brother's bookshelf to get the See inside the Human Body book from the top shelf and its been one of your favorite books to have us read to you.

I recently went to go pick out a new pair of glasses. You were with me and "helping" me pick out a new pair. You were taking your job seriously and were being very cute. You picked out a pair and told me it just wasn't right and then you looked again for me while I looked for myself. I was making my selections when you held one up for me and said "Mom, this one is perfect for you!" It turns out you had found my exact same frame style that I currently had been wearing but you found it in a different color! They were brown with plaid on the side and my current ones are purple with flowers. I was impressed that you found and recognized it! The sales lady checked and it had the same serial number with a different color code.

For fun, I decided to ask you the same questions I asked your brother when he turned 4:

- What is your name? Landon. Landon starts with the letter M. Hahahaha! (you think its hilarious to say the wrong answers) As a side note, you do not like pet names. If we call you anything but Landon you get very angry with us. And also, you can write your own name ;-)
- What is your favorite toy? Giant Legos Houses
- What is your favorite drink? Water
- What is your favorite food? Cheese and ice cream
- What is your favorite thing to do outside? Mud
- What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy? Decorations for Christmas
- What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy? Cook with Daddy
- What is your favorite animal? Cookie horses (ok not a real answer. And you thought it was hilarious)
- What is your favorite song? Alphabet song
- What do you want to be when you grow up? Make giant pictures

- Best friend: Stevie

- Favorite color: yellow like a lightbulb or Rainbow

- Favorite cartoon: Lego Documentary, Wonderpets, Tumble Leaf and Blues Clues

- Favorite holiday: Christmas Halloween

Favorite book: Bear Snores On. You think its funny when the bear wakes up grumpy and snarly. You also love Dont Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and See Inside the Human Body.

Some recent quotes:

"I want to brush my teeth with MUD. YUM! (Maniacal laughter)"

"Look! Landon tracks!" (Muddy footprints)

"Mom! A real monster scared me in my bed!"

"....but I trying not to pick up my mess. I want to let my mess live not die. I'm trying to keep my mess safe!" (Landon on not cleaning up his toys)

"He has a tasty leg....I pull this eye apart!" (He is pretending to be a monster that is eating "people cookies")

"Landon, are you ok?" "No, I'm not ok" "what the matter?" " I just really want to swim underwater like a fish AND go to outer space today".

"I just need to find a small house for Weil-wee that's small and tidy and won't blow away in the rain."

"Hahaha, I turn myself into a pirate sheep. And not just any sheep but the biggest baddest pirate sheep ever!"

"Those thunderclouds are veeeery angry!"

"Would you like some leaf spaghetti? It's made from leaves and mud!"

"I'm making a hungry feast for caterpillar." (a live caterpillar on a toy plate with lots of leaves)

" Cupcake Stocking (our Christmas Elf) has a red coat, a little red hat, and a body with no tail."

You've renamed our cats "Swenting cat" (Bailey) and "ratching cat" (Beau)

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You love it when your Daddy grills and you call burger patties "fire pancakes" and the grill the "fire machine". You also love helping your Dad make pancakes and waffles indoors and you like to pretend to make "leaf waffles" when you are playing outside in your little play house.

You are potty trained! 6 weeks after you turned 4 you decided all of a sudden to try using the potty. We had one fairly easy day and then you decided you were over it and told me that diapers were "just perfect for you". I admit I wasn't wanting to let you go back so I offered up small lego sets for prizes and from then on you quickly mastered it. We had searched for months for the perfect incentive- turns out legos were interesting enough to help you stay on track!

You love playing with legos. Right now our playroom has your creations on multiple surfaces. Usually you are building houses but you've also started building spaceships and flying cars. You like to mix and match your lego guys and give them non-heads for heads (one guy has a lamp for a head). When you are playing with legos you are occupied for a long time. You've played for 3 hours with them on several occasions.

Child you are changing so fast that I'm having trouble keeping up with you! Just as soon as I think I've figured out where four year old Landon's capabilities and interests are you surprise me. You sat down one morning and grabbed your brothers school supplies and wrote your name. Another day you took the maze I had set out for your brother and did the first half fairly well for not knowing the rules. We had never done mazes together so you didn't know the rules, but when I grabbed a fresh maze for you and explained the rules you were able to not only do it, but you sat down and did 12 mazes in a row. You really enjoyed them and I had no idea your pencil grasp had improved to that level of control. While your brother and I do school on most days you and I only do school on occasion when you ask to join in. Probably once a month to be truthful. You have plenty of time to do school in your life and I see no reason to rush you unless its your idea to join in. You seem to do very well learning on your own.

I can't believe that you are already four, Landon! In some ways you've always seemed like a kid instead of a baby so it feels like your baby days were a lifetime ago. But now you are changing so fast that I'm very aware of how quickly time is flying by. You ride a bike with training wheels along with your brother and are only 1-2 clothing sizes smaller than your brother. You two do most things together and the age difference feels very small. I can only imagine what your next year will hold. We love you Landon Robert! Please try to be a little more careful and ask permission before you take stuff apart, okay?